Researching ethnicity and substances: a contested arena

This special focus on ethnicity and drugs examines the relationship between ethnicity and substance use. The social and political history of racial and ethnic groupings in the U.S., the U.K. as well as other European countries has been inextricably intertwined with documenting the use of both legal and illegal substances. Typically, the linkage between racial and ethnic groupings and drugs and alcohol has taken the form of linking “a scapegoated substance to a troubling subordinate group” (Reinarman & Levine, 1997:1). In the US, for instance, such “scapegoating” has linked Native Americans and drinking, cannabis and Mexicans, and, more recently, crack cocaine and impoverished African Americans and Latinos (Alexander, 2012; Lusane, 1991). Many of these “connections” have been built around national census categories, which, more recently, have been critiqued for their essentialist constructions of ethnic identities (Kertzer & Arel, 2002).

Today, considering ethnicity is still important in the drugs and alcohol research fields, where essentialist notions of ethnicity still pervade much of the present day epidemiological research in which ethnic categories are used for documenting health disparities (see De Kock, Decorte, Vanderplasschen, Derluyn, & Sacco, 2017a, this issue). These issues have a significant influence both on drugs and alcohol research as well as current debates in health research and epidemiology about the applicability of racial or ethnic classifications. While some researchers have argued against classifying people by race and ethnicity, on the grounds that it reinforces racial and ethnic divisions (Kaplan & Bennett, 2003; Osborne & Feit, 1992), others have strongly argued in the importance of using these classifications for documenting health disparities, while nevertheless admitting to the “unscientific” nature of the dominant categories (Kreiger, 2000; Stolley, 1999). In accepting the “unscientific” and arbitrary nature of racial and ethnic classifications, critical epidemiologists have also emphasised the extent to which race/ethnicity are “powerful” social categories used to produce and reproduce relations between ethnic groups within our society (Kreiger, 2000). Given the fact that these categories are invested with social power and can be used to oppress different ethnic groups, the question becomes “not whether, but how”, we use these “societal categories…to extend understanding of determinants of racial/ethnic inequalities in health” (Kreiger, 2000: 212).

Given these on-going discussions, our aim within this Special Focus is to move beyond essentialist views on ethnicity in the study of drugs and alcohol and instead consider notions of ethnicity as dynamic, fluid and context-specific. In adopting such an approach, which emphasises both fluidity and ethnic diversity (Harries, Hollingworth, James, & Fangen, 2016), we do not mean to suggest that people are free to choose whatever ethnic identity they wish (Cruz, 1996). Instead, we would argue that individuals are influenced and constrained in various ways by their socioeconomic and geographical environment (Song, 2003). Furthermore, their chosen ethnic identity has to be recognised and validated by an audience (Jenkins, 2008). Hence, ethnic identities are continually constructed and re-constructed within processes of social practice. Ethnic identities are part of a social, historical and politically located struggle over meaning and identity (Hall, 1990). In other words, social, political and economic structures situate members of ethnic groupings in relation to similar others so that collectively they experience their world from specific positions. Nevertheless, individuals creatively accomplish their ethnic identities in different ways in spite of pre-given structural determinants. Therefore, ethnicity must be considered both in terms of social categorizations and social relationships.

In such processes of ethnic identification, consumption (Miles, 2000), including drugs and alcohol consumption, play an important part. Commodities, whether they are clothes, music, drinks, or drugs, can be important symbols of an individual’s (ethnic) identity and act as boundary markers between his or her social group and other groups. Consequently, individuals can draw on alcohol and drug consumption, as well as fashion, style, and taste, in the construction of their ethnic identities. From this perspective, drugs and alcohol consumption can be examined in the socio-cultural context of other commodities consumed by people in establishing their identities. Such an approach is in opposition to much of the epidemiological drug and alcohol research in which the social context of drug consumption has generally been ignored (Hunt, Moloney, & Evans, 2009; Moloney & Hunt, 2012). Instead of examining the effects of immigrant or ethnic identity upon the propensity to use drugs or alcohol, in which the formation and transformation of these ethnic identities themselves are generally taken for granted or treated as static rather than dynamic, we argue that the relationship be reversed. In other words, instead of focussing on how identity influences the use of drugs and alcohol, we suggest that we begin to explore how they are used or avoided to shape the identities of ethnic minorities (Moloney & Hunt, 2012,2016).

Moreover, such practices of drugs and alcohol consumption in the construction of ethnic identities and ethnic boundaries may also be linked up to a larger set of global and commercialised subcultural identifications. For instance, and relevant for the papers in this Special Focus, studies of the relationship between drugs and alcohol use and street cultures have tried to move beyond essentialist thinking and instead conceptualise the dynamic and developing aspects of ethnic identity. In such studies, for example, Bourgois (2003) and Lalander (2009), researchers have highlighted how street cultures, in which ethnic identifications often play a central part, can provide alternative definitions of self-identity, especially for young men, who live in communities marked by poverty and social exclusion and who have little access to masculine status in the formal economy (Bourgois, 2003). Such street cultures may also be influenced by larger cross-national cultural symbolic fields with images of gangsters, hip-hop, coolness, masculinity, and independence. Within these subcultures, drug selling and drug use often play a prominent role (Bengtsson, 2012). In this way, drug dealing and drug use may be part of subcultural and ethnic identifications and used as symbols of resistance and opposition to mainstream society from which members of street cultures may feel marginalised and excluded (Lalander, 2009). For a more general discussion of drugs and subcultures also see Young (1971) and Willis (1978).

For future research on ethnicity and drugs and alcohol consumption, it may be fruitful to examine to what extent the economic, social and political situations, in which different ethnic groups find themselves, influences their relationships to drugs and alcohol, especially in relation to consuming alcohol and drugs, selling drugs, and even seeking treatment for drug use? More specifically, to what extent do actors within these groups use alcohol or drugs to associate with or reject their societally defined identities? In what situations do they adopt an identity as a member of an ethnic minority and its associated alcohol and drug using behaviours, and in what other situations do they define themselves as members of a more majority based grouping, thereby adopting alternative substance using behaviours? Such questions are not solely academic but instead strike at the very heart of much of the research that is currently undertaken in the field of drugs and alcohol studies. How these questions are examined may have significant political, social and health consequences.

This Special Focus includes five articles focussing on Ethnicity and drugs. The articles were initially presented as papers at an international Conference on “Ethnic Minority Youth: Drugs, Gangs and Street Life”, arranged by the Centre for Alcohol and Drug Research, Aarhus University in September 2015. Seventy participants from all over the world attended the Conference.

The first article by De Kock et al. (2017a, this issue) begins with a critical assessment of the bulk of contemporary epidemiological research on ethnic minorities and migrants. The authors argue that this research is often based on a static and essentialist view on ethnicity. Consequently, they argue, such research is unable to distinguish sufficiently between ethnic and non-ethnic determinants influencing problematic substance use and treatment. In order to overcome such methodological flaws, the authors suggest involving theories of intersectionality, and incorporating an analysis of all levels (from micro to macro) and loci (individual, community, society) of research in a holistic research design.

Lalander’s paper on ethnicity (Lalander, 2017, this issue), the illegal drug economy and social structures, also challenges essentialist thinking within drugs and alcohol research. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, Lalander analyses how a group of men of Chilean background involved in the illegal drug economy, and living in a Swedish stigmatised environment, create, recreate and utilise ethnic notions in their day-to-day lives. The young men’s ethnic identity as practiced in street cultures is performed in different situations thereby creating what Lalander calls a sense of “Chileanness”. This staged ethnic identity, intersecting with class and gender, helps the young men to fight feelings of marginalisation and a lack of integration in Swedish society.

In the Novich & Hunt’s paper (Novich & Hunt, 2017, this issue), the authors, using interview from a study of 253 young ethnic minority gang members in San Francisco, examine these young people’s experiences and perceptions of police practices. Using a procedural justice model, Novich and Hunt examine to what extent these young people report disrespectful or respectful police behaviour and explore the ways in which these experiences, whether positive or negative, shape their attitudes towards the police. Their findings suggest that negative exchanges with the police contribute to their negative attitudes, fear and distrust of the police, whereas more respectful interactions can contribute to more positive attitudes. This finding suggests that the police may be more effective in policing if they treat criminally involved individuals with the dignity they value, even when they are intervening in their criminal activities.

In Søgaard’s article (Søgaard, 2017, this issue), the focus is on the inner city night-time economy. Søgaard explores how the policing of Danish nightlife events contributes to the (re)production of ethnic divisions and inequalities in night-time consumer spaces. More specifically, the author examines the ways in which key governmental rationalities inform bouncers’ policy of excluding ethnic minority men from entering nightlife arenas. He shows how the bouncers’ notions of “ethnic governance” are driven not only by economic calculations, combined with notions of ethnic prejudice, but also as a result of power struggles and specifically notions of masculinity between the bouncers and ethnic minority youth.

The final article examines the issue of how to involve ethnic minorities and migrants in research on substance use. In the paper, De Kock et al. (2017b, this issue) discuss challenges linked to the implementation of Community-Based Participatory Research in Bulgarian, Slovakian and Turkish communities in the city of Ghent, Belgium. In their research on substance use and service utilisation, they focus on an assessment of community collaboration, co-ethnic researchers and the empowerment of ethnic minority communities.

While all of these papers highlight the continuing importance of ethnicity in research on alcohol and drugs, each one of them raise questions about the ways in which public health research, and specifically epidemiological investigations, have approached the topic. In raising such critical questions, whether they be about methodological individualism or a failure to examine the effects of institutional racism and discrimination, this collection of papers provide researchers with analytical frameworks that potentially can produce a holistic framework to situate different ethnic groups within an economic, social and political environment. As De Kock and colleagues (De Kock et al., 2017a, this issue) note, at the end of their paper on ethnicity and epidemiology, it is important that researchers begin to de-construct the notion of ethnicity and focus on structural constraints to examine the impact of discrimination on the lives and health of immigrants and ethnic minorities. We hope that this collection of papers will encourage other researchers to begin this important process.

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of this article.